One trademark across these tracks is the marriage of multiple electronic sound patterns with a heavy percussive presence. Recognizable instruments crop up from time to time, notably piano and various prepared string instruments. Here's a brief rundown on the participants: Gorce Govadas contributes two tracks, the first featuring electronic patterns (might include piano) that strike an odd balance between being musical and mechanical. There's also a 15 minute track of abstract minimal electronic patterns peppered with subtle percussive bits. Things plod on a bit, but nearly halfway through the percussion takes on a more prominent role and my interest perked up again as a somewhat ethnic feel prevails though the mechanical electro and percussion patterns.
One of Marc Chesterman's tracks is surprisingly rock oriented, though the music is still in the repetitive minimalist realm. The electronics have a spacey crashing guitar sound, and the percussion has a nice frantic rockin' feel. His second track is very different, being a collection of urban sounds, particular cars rushing by and voice samples of what seem to be loudspeaker announcements. About halfway through we still hear the sounds of the city but block percussion patterns and ambient waves are introduced. The ambient bits mesh with the sound of the cars and the whole thing becomes a strange but interesting collage piece.
Always Building play an abstract collection of electronic and percussion sounds that are both noisy and pleasant. There's lots of clanging about and also some space tones that are a bit brain piercing. The effect is much like ambient music though it's more jarring to the senses. There's lots of percussive clatter but I think I hear guitar and perhaps even violin. In any event, unconventional string playing is much of the focus and the effect is more of the intriguing chaotic ambience that is heard throughout this collection.
The Smile Plough offer two very different tracks, one being possibly the most distinctly "musical" piece on the set, but also one that fits in neatly with the dominant theme. Finally, John Kennedy, Paul Winstanley, and Andrew Moon teamup for one of my favorite tracks on the disc. It's similar to many of the other tracks but the space electronics are more distinct and there's even a slight sense of Dub rhythms as well.
Jerry Kranitz, Aural Innovations #17 (September 2001)
The "serious playfulness… of Gaburo's work is almost nowhere to be found in today's po-faced, fashion conscious, electroacoustic/electronics scene. Except, perhaps, in New Zealand. The handful of sound artists who record for the Auckland-based Is Land label don't take themselves too seriously, and they have something original to offer."
So Called Science is a compilation, but it doesn't contain material from any of the other Is Land releases. Instead, Paul Guilford (alias Paul Winstanley, a member of Is Land's electroacoustic improvising house band, Audible 3) has made a couple of pieces of music, and asked other musicians to make pieces that are (at least roughly) compatible with them.
Although the results are extremely diverse, So Called Science is cohesive and impressive. Both tracks by Guilford and Henry Duy, a duo known as The Smile Plough, are intriguing; 'Rocket Man' sounds like a low register binaural Sun Ra synthesizer improvisation, whereas in 'Slow Landing In A Field', the individually articulated notes of splayed chords, on what sounds like (but certainly isn't) a pair of amplified spinnets, are subject to increasingly exaggerated degrees of baroque ornamentation which distorts and threatens to fly out of control.
'Escalator 1 & 2' by JKPWAM (i.e. John Kennedy, Paul Winstanley and Andrew Moon) has the kind of fragmentarily funky preamble that sometimes features on more adventurous drum 'n' bass records, then it becomes an untidy but endearing shuffle.
My favourite track is 'Revving Drum', by m.chest (i.e. Marc Chesterman), in which a fairly well-disguised washing machine moving in and out of its spin cycle is enhanced by full-tilt Death Metal drumming. Contributions by Gorce Govadas, //..// and Always Buildings maintain the high standard.
Brain Marley, Rubberneck